My Hacked PlayStation Account, And How I Fixed It

Last year we bought a PS4 Pro, I was excited having never really played a modern console.

We picked up a Destiny 2 and a hand full of other games. Destiny 2 quickly became one of my favorites connecting with friends and eventually joining a clan.

My 11-year-old son also enjoyed the game. He would often help me out since I apparently struggle with simple things…

A few months ago my son tells me that he can’t play Fortnite and that Destiny 2 no longer had Forsaken. An expansion that we recently bought on my account which is the primary account on the PS. This lets us share any DLC with other registered accounts on our system.

I thought that maybe there was a glitch because I had also just renewed the PlayStation network subscription a couple of days before. After some research, I learn that it might be caused when a PlayStation is no longer the primary console.

I hunted around looking for the settings that let me confirm if it was. Previously it was since we only have one PlayStation and never owned one before this one.

Assuming my son tried some funny business and was messing around with the accounts I was satisfied that he had no idea what I was talking about. Plus his account was not set to the primary.

I contacted the PlayStation support and they told me that I had two consoles. I said that I only have the one. I asked if a recent update might cause some issues. They assured me that nothing like that can happen.

Naturally, I was confused because something was fishy.

I gave them my serial number and they confirmed that it was associated with my account but it was not the primary account and that there was a second console.

They for some reason could only tell me that it was connected. They could not provide me with any other details like an IP address or a time when that console was activated or by who.

It was however activated as the primary a few days before I learned of the issues. I asked if they could force a deactivation and was told no but I could do it myself if I could access the other console…

I asked if my account was hacked, which they told me the only way that’s possible is if I gave out my password. I mentioned the 640,000 decrypted PlayStation accounts being Sold on DarkWeb to which they didn’t really have an answer for and assured me that I was not hacked.

OK…

I asked what my options were. They said that if I can access the other console I can sign out of it and disconnect it from my account. Like if I were to sell it. Or I can force a sort of reset and make your PlayStation the primary again. I gave that a try and was greeted with an error since I’m not on the primary PlayStation. But I also can’t reset the Primary because it turns out you can only reset the primary every 6 months.

By this point was starting to lose my cool.

I had paid over $100 for a DLC, Re-activated the PSN and my family was not able to use any of it.

The real kicker is that my PSN account had previously been set up with 2-factor authentication as well. I know this because after turning it on my phone had previous codes from Sony.

After re-enabling 2FA it forced all logged in Sony accounts to resign in. I continued to receive messages from whoever it was trying to use my account details. It could even be other people trying to login. After a few weeks whoever was using my account gave up because they could no longer use their console so they were kind enough to deactivate their PlayStation which let me get mine back.

This whole process took me 3 weeks. I was pissed off, to say the least.

I had trusted my account security, Used a unique password for my account, enabled 2FA from the start ( still not clear how it was turned off ) I was talked to by support like I gave my password out to the world to use.

Their ability to fix the issue was essentially by doing nothing at all. Their customer service didn’t have the ability to overwrite the 6-month rule.